BAND WITH THE STRONGEST WORK ETHIC Viva Voce
Jun 18, 2009
Despite expanding their lineup to a quartet, the husband-wife team still makes it a family affair.
BY MIKE SHANLEY
If Viva Voce doesn't take honors for Band with the Strongest Work Ethic, they're definitely in the running for such a designation. For a few years, the band was just as likely to be on tour as not. "Our m.o. has been to put a record out and basically tour for a year and a half to two years to support it," says guitarist/vocalist Anita Robinson, who started the Portland band, along with her drummer/vocalist husband Kevin. "Then we tour as much as humanly possible during that time."
The road is such a good friend to the duo that Anita inadvertently mixes her metaphors, saying she's "very at home" while touring. "I thrive on being on the road. I love traveling," she says. "I love playing music. It's what I wanted to do my whole life. I mean, it is my life."
In addition to headlining their own shows, Viva Voce supported hometown friends the Shins on their tours in support of Wincing the Night Away. Anita, who sang harmony on the album, reprised her efforts onstage and in the performances the Shins played on the late night television circuit throughout 2007.
While the Robinsons spent much of 2008 off the road, the work didn't cease. They formed a second band, Blue Giant, which taps into a countriefied Byrds/southern rock style and departs from Viva Voce's psychedelic dreams. At the same time Amore!Phonics, their home recording studio, was restructured so it would be separate from their living quarters. "Before, whatever tiny living space we had would temporarily be converted into a recording studio and basically life as we know it would have to be put on hold," Anita says. "You'd have amplifiers in the bathtub, cables hanging from the ceiling and sleeping bags stapled over the windows so your neighbors don't hate you."
After the other efforts were in motion, the duo resurrected the Viva Voce model and recorded Rose City (Barsuk). Their fourth album, it includes the same blend of heavy guitars with dreamy melodies and harmonies, but this time they deliver it in more concise blasts that average three minutes, without any excess. And finally, 11 years after starting the duo, the Robinsons have added two new members to Viva Voce to recreate their heavy sound organically.
Kevin and Anita met in Muscle Shoals, Alabama during the late '90s and began collaborating almost immediately. In 2002, they moved their base of operation to Portland, continuing in their manner of recording all their music themselves. Although their husband/wife, guitar/drums axis could draw comparisons to the White Stripes, a more apt comparison would be Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley with an instrument swap. Like YLT, Viva Voce's sound combines guitar freakouts, which Anita often plays on a double-necked axe, with the couple's lilting harmonies landing on top of the music. In the studio they take turns on bass, and Kevin handles piano and keyboard parts. Live, their duo augmented their sound with triggered samples and keyboards, which Kevin often played while keeping the beat with the other half of his body.
Now Kevin has switched to bass and newcomer Evan Railton has taken over drum duties. Corrina Repp rounds out the new lineup, playing guitar, keyboards and theremin. The addition seemed inevitable to the Robinsons after years of doing it on their own. "We did our last show in Portland in December 2007 and I just knew that it was the last time that particular set was going to be performed with just the two of us," Anita says. "It was a really awesome, fun, challenging way to play and I think we just took it as far as we could take it," Anita says.
The swirling, heavy-cum-hypnotic sound of The Heat Can Melt Your Brain (2004) and Get Your Blood Sucked Out (2006) also recalls the best production work of Kramer, whose similar technique left an indelible mark on the catalogs of Galaxie 500 and his own trippy unit Bongwater. This continues on Rose City, where the understated "Midnight Sun" could be a Northwest counterpart to Damon and Naomi, who anchored Galaxie 500 and continued to work with Kramer on their first few duo albums.
The similarities are a happy coincidence, though, according to Anita. She professes a love for lo-fi and garage rock, but her inspiration comes from more popular sources. "I love classic rock and I love delta blues," she says. "I love some new music being made now, but I have to admit, I listen to a lot of older things probably more often."
Besides, she prefers not to put any limits, stylistic or otherwise, on the work of Viva Voce. The group even recorded a few soundtracks for some Portland filmmakers last year, a project that Anita describes in manner that epitomizes the band's sonic influence. "I really like lush, ambitious music and recordings," she says. "Those are the kinds of things that I get inspired by the most."
[Photo Credit: Alicia J. Rose]
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